So much for my 2021 resolution.
I want to take a moment to reflect and list out all of the products I made since the pandemic started and in the ways that it failed.
Right at the start just for learning, I started making an e-commerce site almost from scratch using a node server talking to WooCommerce. It was meant to be a stylish cyberpunk-esque drop-shipping printed shirt site. I setup payments and hosted parts of it on my digital ocean droplet, with ssl domains too. Ordered and received a shirt. I lost interest when I had to setup an Instagram page and run advertising. I was not interested in that grind at all.
I got interested in computer vision and began to develop code that could estimate clothing measurements using the computer's webcam. I did 1-2 months of solid work and got decent results. I gave up because the error rate was +-5cm, too much for my taste. I packaged the code into a shopify extension and am not maintaining it at all.
At the start of 2021, I worked on creating a YouTube clone but with reddit awards. It was meant to stimulate the small meme video economy, helping them monetize better. I feel micropayments can be good. I made video uploading and award functionality, reusing my same droplet. Was pretty fun until I hit the chicken and egg problem. No existing meme page was ready to upload to my site, so I needed a way to seed content.
I got a pivot idea, why don't we allow gifting for any YouTube video. This could be done using a chrome extension. After struggling for about a month with JavaScript I got it to the chrome marketplace. After some basic reddit marketing, I got hit with the news that YouTube is going to introduce per-video gifting awards! That pretty much stopped that dream.
I might give this one another shot. Its a clubhouse + video livestream app, with an aim to cater react content and discussions. I got video, audio and chat running using webRTC. It can have guests, feels very similar to David Sack's Callin app. I still feel that HasanAbi style react/discussion content for more areas.
During the second wave of covid, a lot of people were sharing phone numbers on image statuses on instagram and WhatsApp. Copying numbers was tedious, so I made a quick website to extract numbers from any picture with a calling button.
After this was pretty much involved in applying for masters. Some travelling, social obligations and on-call work took gaps. I feel fine with my overall productivity, its just the results that disappoint me a bit.
Over the course of these projects, I feel like I have learnt how to spot promising avenues and prototype quick. I have dipped my hand in various parts of a web app. This gives me big chunks of code that I can quickly reuse and reconfigure for future products. I have also read several books and watched hours of good lectures/interviews about technology. Some of my favourites are:
- The Upstarts (story of Uber and Airbnb)
- Hackers and Painters
- In the plex: The inside story of Google
- The dream machine (History of computers, halfway done)
The idea remains the crucial part of projects and products. A good-sounding idea which is actually detached from reality is a really scary death sentence that can suck up years of effort. After learning about how many products were made and through Ycombinator videos, I concluded that there are 3 important characteristics of good ideas.
- It should be something you're passionate. It should be part of your dream about what you would be working on 5 years later. For me this seems to be content, XR immersive apps and robotic AI
- It should be a solution to a pressing hidden problem that customers currently have. The product should do this job with current hardware.
- The project should be within the realms of what I am currently good at. For me, it's technology in general ;)
For future projects, I will keep shorter prototype sprints and focus heavily on getting customers. I will begin to talk to more people, earlier in the dev cycle. All effort will be done to make it as friction-free as possible to use quickly. If the product solves their issue, this should be easy. I will also share the product among my contacts, getting them to use it if they're the target audience. Time for cold emails and DMs.
Learning about the world, tech and economy is key to generating more ideas. Understanding systems while keeping an eye for gaps will help recognise problems. I will try to be more skeptical, ask more questions to get to the fundamental first principles of any job, and find gaps. Being surrounded by good twitter accounts, YouTube videos, podcasts and books does help in aiding my quest to find the problem. Last but not the least, talking to new people, learning about what they do is one of the most valuable and overlooked source. Getting into more conversations will surely bring up opportunities to be helpful and useful. Happy to get in touch!
Let's hope for a more effective 2022! 🤞